Navigating ewallets in a cashless era

EWALLETS continue to gain traction today, as more and more users, especially Sarawakians, look increase their utilisation and range of alternate digital payments.

In conjunction with the ongoing Virtual Sarawak Financial Awareness Campaign (ViSFA) 2021, Boost and Creador Foundation’s Multiply recently held an interview session which gave BizHive an insight into how users can manage their personal finances safely and make the most out of their money by using ewallets.

To note, Multiply is a personal finance platform established by Creador Foundation, a non-profit organisation.

According to Creador Foundation senior programme manager Dr Shobana Sivanendran, Multiply (which can be accessed at multiply.org.my) is a platform that’s free for all Malaysians to use to learn how to manage their finances better and make better financial decisions, including to help them avoid facing financial difficulties.

Launched in August 2020, Multiply has to date, recorded over 350,000 users to its platform, with user numbers growing each month.

Multiply is also currently participating in the Virtual Sarawak Financial Awareness Campaign (ViSFA) 2021, together with Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) Kuching and over 20 other partners from August to October 2021.

“We wanted to create this platform that is free for all Malaysians to use so that they will be able to learn how to manage their finances better and make better financial decisions,” Dr Sivanendran explained.

“And this is really coming from what we’ve learnt about being able to help people make decisions that prevent them from getting into trouble rather than trying to help them once they are already in trouble. That’s where we are coming from.

“Our target market are Malaysian youths and also working adults, so those aged 18 years and above.

“What we have done is we have come up with a lot of different types of content on our platform (multiply.org.my) to make learning personal finance easier and more accessible to everyone.

“It’s not intimidating, is easy to understand and is quite fun and interactive as well.

“We have a lot of visual tools like infographics and animated videos.

“We have calculators that are really easy to use and we also have a lot of written content. The written content, and all the content, is in English and Bahasa Malaysia.

“We also make sure that the language we use is easy for the average person to understand so we avoid technical terms. we basically want to make financial education fun and relatable to the general public.”

Dr Sivanendran highlighted that one of the topics that is quite big on the cards for Sarawakians is online payments.

This is no surprise, given the current pandemic situation, where it is advisable to conduct cashless or online transactions, as opposed to relying on cash-in-hand and exchanging physical cash.

“Specifically, what we wanted to cover is ewallets because from Multiply’s perspective, we also feel that ewallets are important for people to know about and also important to know how to use it well and to get the benefits from it.”

The rising trend of contactless payments and its benefits

It can be said that the pandemic, while being disruptive in many ways, was the push that ewallets needed to catapult its many benefits and features into the spotlight.

Dr Sivanendran highlighted that at Multiply, they want to educate people about the basic information they should know about ewallets.

“One of the things that we tell them is that it’s also a good tool to help them plan ahead (for their finances) and also encourages them to maintain a budget. It’s just one other way that they can check easily.

“On top of that, we also mention a few other benefits. Ewallets are a useful tool to receiving government aid, it’s an easy way to pay bills or transfer bill and also there are other features that allow them to purchase things like insurance.

“I think the most important thing currently, with the Covid-19 pandemic, is that it also allows you to make contactless payments.

“Everyone wants to be quite cautious, preventing the spread of Covid-19. That’s an important point we want to educate the public on as well, the benefits of using eWallet.”

Another point highlighted by Dr Sivanendran is that the use of ewallets is applicable not only to urban but also rural Sarawak because you do not need to carry as much cash around.

“I understand in Sarawak, especially in the semi-urban and rural parts, access to cash can be quite difficult. With ewallets, it allows this part of the Sarawak population the ability to actually manage their finances in a more integrated way and also a simpler way for them.”

For homegrown lifestyle eWallet Boost, there has been a tremendous growth in terms of both transactions and volume, particularly for its online business segment.

In terms of the transaction value by Boost over the first half of this year, compared to the first half of last year, it has gone up by 25 per cent.

“Obviously part of being a digital player, actually we are at the right time despite the pandemic,” Boost Life chief executive officer (CEO) Ungku Norliza Ungku Halmie said.

“The pandemic has (been disruptive) but because we are already an online (platform) in nature, it’s actually an opportunity for us.

“The usage that we see on offline (the ones that require physical scan and pay to the merchants), I think across the industry, everyone saw a big dip because of the movement control order (MCO) regulations.

“In terms of our online business, we are seeing tremendous growth in terms of both transactions and volume.”

With merchants, she noted that there was also an increase in online registrations as merchants could not really do the usual offline transactions anymore, which pushed them to transition their business into an online platform. As a result, Boost’s online merchant registrations increased.

To date, Boost has about 9.2 million users to date and about 350,000 merchant touchpoints across Malaysia, of which most of its usage are concentrated in Klang Valley.

“But Sabah and Sarawak comes very close as our second and third states that is actively using boost and is our strongest advocate as well throughout Malaysia.

“Sabah and Sarawak are part of our top three contributors in terms of overall boost active users and active merchants today. What we saw from the statistics, Sabah and Sarawak have adopted (Boost) fairly fast, as opposed to the other states in the Peninsular and they are more open and receptive in terms of digital adoption.”

Sarawak climbing up the ranks

On that note, Boost Biz’s East Malaysia head Joseph Tsen explained that through an initiative with Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) Sdn Bhd (MDEC), called Go e-Commerce, they have since last year onboarded more than a thousand merchants in Sarawak who have been willing to adopt the online strategy because of Boost’s unique payment link.

“We were one of the very first to start to educate this market to use that feature,” Tsen said.

“What we did was, we encourage the merchants to send the payment link over once your order is confirmed and when the user or customer has paid, then only the merchants do the necessary preparations for the orders for pickup.

“On top of that, when people talk about the traditional online business, for example with online platforms, it’s not easy for people to join that.

“Through the Go e-Commerce programme, since last year, we have worked very hard to get as many merchants to join us as we hope to really help the community and especially whenever there is a lockdown, the business can still continue and survive.”

For S Pay Global (formerly known as Sarawak Pay), it experienced tremendous growth in the year 2019 and 2020, both in terms of number of users and merchants in Sarawak.

“The uptake was more apparent with the advent of the pandemic,” Lucy Wong of S Pay Global said in an email interview.

“Our Chief Minister in retrospect was very pleased that Sarawak under his leadership had the foresight to embark and initiate the foundation for a cashless society when he launched the Sarawak Digital Economy Strategy (2018-2022) in December 2017.

“Most Sarawakians aged 18 to 60 living in the major city and towns of Sarawak have one way or another witnessed or experienced the transition to cashless via way of an eWallet on their mobile phone.

“As at August 31, 2021, Sarawak Pay has over 560,000 users and over 82,000 merchants with close to 30 per cent using their eWallet on daily basis.

“Total amount transacted to date has passed the RM1.5 billion mark and we expect that number to grow substantially going into 2022.”

According to Wong, S Pay Global is constantly adding new merchants.

“The focus now is on hawkers and petty trader. We have a lot of these in the smaller towns and districts throughout Sarawak.

“The Bantuan Khas Sarawakku Sayang (BKSS) financial assistance payout through Sarawak Pay for petty traders and hawkers from Sarawak Government was a good strategy to entice this sector to come on board and adopt the cashless lifestyle.”

To recap, Sarawak Pay recently changed its name to ‘S PAY GLOBAL’, in line with the announcement made by Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg during the launch of Sarawak Pay international payments with UnionPay.

“To reinforce our branding and presence on the global stage, it is now timely for us to rename our Sarawak Pay eWallet to S Pay Global,” Abang Johari had said during the launch.

However, Wong noted that due to the restrictions on travel during this Covid-19 pandemic, they have had to postpone their promotion on the use of Union Pay virtual card; that enables their eWallet to be used for payment overseas.

She added that the name change to S PAY Global recently is a preparatory step in that direction.

Meanwhile, Wong revealed that S Pay Global’s two recent releases of Loyalty Programme and Lifestyle will set the stage for its next phase of growth as its user-base has matured and extended beyond payments of bills and retail transactions to include other financial services such as loans repayment, insurance, donation and so on.

“The objective is to enhance the eWallet towards the direction of a Super App (one App) for everything and in the process offer users the daily conveniences at their fingertips.

“Our other future highlights will include the offering of a bigger wallet size and more cashless lifestyle features such as shopping, investment, transport, fuel, and others.”

Education still key for ewallets’ growth

TO embrace the cashless lifestyle, it is essential to educate the community today, for both the older and younger generation, on how to be mindful of their personal details and finances when using ewallets.

For Multiply, Dr Sivanendran highlighted that the education they want to provide on ewallets is for people who are actually quite new to its concept.

“In Sarawak, it is a growing market, so there are more people who might be looking into just starting to use ewallets so we want to reach those people and teach them about all these safety features so that they actually know what to look out for from the get-go, what to be aware of, what to be alert about, how not to fall prey to scams,” she explained.

“On top of that, we also noticed that the Multiply demographics, we are quite interested to find that about 30 per cent of Multiply users are aged 55 and over, who might not be as tech savvy, but who might also still benefit a lot from the usage of ewallets.

“We put ourselves in their shoes and also wrote this content to educate them on what to do to be safe when using ewallets.”

Dr Sivanendran revealed that there are five points that Multiply typically tells its readers.

“One is never to share to share your bank account number, debit card numbers or pins, one-time password (OTP) or transaction authorisation code (TAC) with anyone.

“The next one is for users to make it a habit to always check their transactions to make sure that they are not a victim of fraud as well.

“We also shared that ewallets have transaction limits which is important for people to know and be aware of so that they
can plan their spending accordingly.

“And also, the other thing to know is whether they are able to cash out their money or not from ewallet which of course varies from ewallet provider to ewallet provider.”

She noted that most people probably do not have a need to cash out but if there is, it is important to know what the conditions are.

“The other important thing for people new to ewallets to also know about is that there are certain rewards and deals that are applicable to the users of ewallets.

“Being able to use that as well to better plan their finances is also a good thing for ewallet users out there.”

On addressing safety and security issues when using ewallets, Ungku Norliza recalled that during the early days, the knowledge about how users should not give personal information like bank account (numbers), OTP, TAC or passwords was still very minimal somehow.

“At Boost, it is our utmost priority, it is very important for us to educate over and over again, ‘please do not share any personal information which includes your bank account, OTP and passwords’.”

She recalled the complaints Boost received saying that somehow the user’s bank account has been reduced with the wallet balance but upon investigation, the user actually provided the pin or password or OTP to a message they received over Whatsapp.

“But again, that’s where we did a rigorous education plan and also security public service announcement (PSA) to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

“The other note, as a service provider, is we need to always be able to put customers’ safety as our first priority, as I mentioned just now, and come up with better ways on how do we make sure that they feel more secure for when they actually adopt this new way of digitalisation.

“That’s why with Boost, I think after a few months that we’ve been in the market, we introduced and activated biometric identification, either by fingerprint or facial recognition.”

On top of that, Ungku Norliza noted that one of the things they always remind their users is that Boost being an ewallet, they are tightly governed by BNM.

“Under BNM, under the FSA, there are security procedures, audits being conducted, there are requirements that need to be fulfilled on monthly basis, daily basis even, to make sure that our security is not compromised.”

On another note, Ungku Norliza also shared that with Boost, they are trying to shift the usage of credit card to what are the cash flow that you actually have in hand.

“With ewallets, it allows you to see and say that ‘this is my spending for the month’. Maybe in the past, someone would argue saying it’s normal, but it is not.

“Because in the past, when you have a credit card, yes, you can track the bill but when you use cash, there was no means for you to track it real-time.”

Now, ewallets such as Boost allow you to do just that.

“Especially when you have an eallet service provider that gives you an inclusive service, which is then wrapped around your lifestyle, day-in day-out, that involves your shopping behaviour, obligations in terms of bills, necessity spending when it comes to groceries and others.

“You can have that balance or amount that you allocate from your monthly spending, put into an ewallet.

“Once you have that, you know that you have a certain obligation that you need to do which then goes into, let’s say bill payment, a feature that Boost offers.

“For Boost, we know that for bill payment, one would say that it’s (available) across the other platforms as well.

“But what Boost had done and in recognising the importance of managing your bill payment which is your monthly obligation, we have come up with three new features, which none of the ewallets have at this point in time.”

The new features – AutoBills, MultiBills and ViewBills makes Boost the only e-wallet offering users a fuss-free solution to conveniently tap their bills away by managing, viewing, scheduling and making bill payments all from a single, centralised platform.

“What these means is that with Boost now, you don’t have to worry what is, for example, your Astro outstanding bill for the month, because from one app, you can extract that outstanding balance and you can just see it from there that for the current month, you have to pay that certain amount.

“Based on most people’s behaviours today, you probably receive an email in terms of your bill statement, then you need to go to another platform and open another attachment which details that particular obligation from the biller.

“But now with Boost, you can set all your billers, which we have about 50 billers, and it includes utilities, monthly payments for scholarships (for students) and others.

“From these billers, you can extract the information regarding your outstanding bill balances.

“From there, because you have set up multiple bills, in every month, you can combine all your obligations and you can find out your total (outstanding) bills for the month.

“Once you have that set up, you can also set up these bills on ‘recurring’ as well so that you don’t have to think about it anymore the following month.

“But the point here is, as a budget factor, you know that your obligation is to pay bills and every month you are set with for example, RM200, for paying bills.

“And you don’t have to worry about the following month because it will auto deduct for you.”